The sun shone brightly, Eurostar 9021 flashed along by the Thames and, at last, we could blame the French. For 13 years, our neighbours have relaxed on 186mph trains on their side of the Channel tunnel and arched a Gallic eyebrow at the branch line trundle through the green fields of Kent.

Yesterday, the first passenger train to take the new £5.8bn, 68-mile high-speed British track from the tunnel into the revamped St Pancras International was all set to smash the two-hour mark between Paris and London until track maintenance at Calais forced it to slow down.

Despite a hold-up that, for once, was France's fault, the train reached speeds of up to 205mph and set a record for the fastest rail journey between the capitals of two hours, three minutes and 39 seconds. Things going faster and getting better is a curiously old-fashioned idea, but this was a genuine taste of the near future: the magnificently restored St Pancras station opens for international passengers on November 14. Eurostar has promised scheduled journey times of 2hr 15 minutes on the 306-mile route to Gare du Nord - 20 minutes quicker than the fastest services currently running from London Waterloo - with basic fares frozen at £59 return.

Four hundred railway buffs, tourism officials and journalists were greeted with champagne, croissants and ragtime jazz at the beginning of their journey.

An 18-carriage, two-engine train travelling at TGV speeds for the entirety of its trip? "Bof!" shrugged the French contingent, slugging back Nicolas Feuillatte champagne and sneering at "le doggy bags", picnic hampers with saumon fumé and quiche aux petites légumes laid on by Eurostar to reduce the weight of cooked meals for the record-breaking trip.

The British passengers, however, were far more enthusiastic. David Morgan, 65, a lawyer from Norfolk, sported a top hat and Victorian frock coat once worn by the station master at Sheringham, part of the Midland and Great Northern railway familiarly known as the "Muddle and Go Nowhere".

"My grandfather had a butler who took me on the footplate of an engine on my local branch line when I was 10. There's a certain romance to steam but this is the next best thing," he said.

"It's the most exciting new stretch of track since Brunel," exclaimed another passenger.

Small boys in short trousers may no longer wave from bridges at record-breaking trains but their grown-up selves had paid £500 each to railway charities to ride on Eurostar. Some started to wonder about the fate of their blinis et citron as the carriage swayed at 200mph. "Why pay to go on the big dipper at the fun fair?" joked Mike Schumann from near Kings Lynn. An ashen-faced tabloid reporter disappeared to be sick, although the diagnosis may have had more to do with champagne than speed.

Halfway through the Channel tunnel, the French driver, Francis Queret, handed the controls to his British counterpart, Neil Meare, who took the train up to 200mph over the Medway viaduct, flashing through the new Ebbsfleet International station in Kent and under the Thames in a new tunnel. "It's nice to drive fast but we've got speed limits just like you've got in a car," said Mr Meare.

Shortly after fleeting glimpses of the Dartford bridge and Rainham marshes, the train dived into the 12-mile London tunnel, passing through Stratford and under Hackney and emerging with views of the Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe in the City) through the sunshine and construction dust behind King's Cross.

To the strains of The King's Hunting Jig played by a brass band, the train came to rest under the light and airy arches of William Barlow's Victorian shed at St Pancras, the wrought iron repainted its original sky blue.

Eurostar's chief executive Richard Brown said the record marked Britain's "entry into the European high-speed rail club." Eurostar hopes its 2hr 15min London-Paris service will boost annual passenger numbers from 8m to 10m by 2010. When a Eurostar train clocked 208mph and broke the UK speed record in 2003, it triggered a 30% surge in bookings.

Tourist bosses on the train were also enthusiastic. Neil Wootton, of travel company Premium Tours, said the shorter Eurostar times would help its day trips to Paris. "Part of the excitement for the American tourist market is about getting on Eurostar and being able to go under the sea. It's amazing how many Americans get on and expect to see fish and whales from the tunnel."

It may be no less miraculous that Britain is now, finally, a small spur on the European high-speed rail network. But for those whisked from Paris to St Pancras yesterday, their journey was only just beginning: with strikes paralysing the underground and the city's streets gridlocked, it would take many another two hours to cross London, and even more to find the slow train home.